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A Creative Spring: North African Cultural Productions and the Transition

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A Creative Spring: North African Cultural Productions and the Transition A creative Spring: North African cultural productions and the transition Cleo Jay, PhD candidate at SOAS, Near and Middle East department Abstract: 2011 has indisputably been a year of great change for North Africans, and the Arab Spring has been an inspiration for a wide range of cultural productions, from paintings to theatre plays. Artist in various in countries used art to reflect and gain hindsight on the events surrounding them: an interesting example in “Stone from Tahrir Square” by Ashraf Foda, who collected stones discarded by protesters and asked various important figures to sign them, dealing with issues around political activism and memory. The Revolutions have also led to a greater freedom of expression, enabling artists to address issues previously considered taboos. I will look in particular at how theatre is used as an interactive forum for political debates, and I will work on a comparative basis. Theatre acts as a “mirror” for society, through which the youth can reflect on its issues and its hopes, and recent plays served as a “prelude” to the Arab Spring, by expressing the youth’s disillusion and disenfranchisement and focusing on relevant themes such as suicide, women’s rights or corruption of the authorities. I will focus in particular on Morocco, a country who has managed to start a peaceful transition and has introduced a large number of reforms in the last ten years, and compare it to Egypt and Tunisia, who got rid of their oppressive leaders through violent demonstrations. 1 Introduction Over the last 18 months since young Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight in a revolt against government violence, corruption and poverty, much has changed in North Africa: leaders have fallen, the people have taken up to the streets and organized new elections, and at last they have been able to make democratic choices. At the same time, it is a very unstable, dangerous time for populations which never completely recovered their freedom in the post colonial era, and have long been trained to censor themselves. For most North Africans, the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi and the subsequent revolutions that saw some of the longest standing dictators in the area finally fall were unprecedented events, but not surprising ones. After years of unrest and violence and with ever-increasing levels of poverty and unemployment, they had long been hoping for change, and the desperate act of Bouazizi was the spark that set everything alight. The situation varies hugely from one country to the next: while Libya seems to have descended into civil war since the death of Qaddafi, with different tribes and political groups fighting for power, Egypt has managed to hold its first legislative and presidential elections, with the Islamic Brotherhood emerging as a force to be reckoned with. On the other hand, Morocco has remained largely quiet. King Mohammed VI, heir to one of the oldest monarchies in the word and with the reputation of being a dynamic, reformist leader, has managed to dampen the rise of revolutionary movements such as the 20th February by offering a referendum on a new Constitution limiting his own power, and by organizing new elections won for the first time by the Islamic party al ‘Adl wa Tanmiya (Justice and development). He is the only leader who has been willing to reach a historical compromise with the Islamists (Vermeren, 2010:373), securing at the same time his own position as head of State. The destinies of North African populations have thus taken different directions in the wake of the Arab Spring. The case of Morocco is very interesting in comparison to Egypt and Tunisia because since King Mohammed VI took power in 1999, he has engaged in a careful, slow- paced transition, touching all areas from economy to gender equality, and he has also taken steps to reduce corruption and improve access to education. The large protests organized in the country prove that the many reforms advertised by his government 2 have not been as successful as we would like to think, but contrary to the situation in neighbouring countries, few have actually asked for the King to step down. He remains one of the most popular leaders in the region. In this very unstable situation in which all possibilities are open, artists, writers and online activists have been able to express themselves in a more open, honest way, discussing their own political allegiance, their experiences of state brutality and their hopes for the future. Art and theatre have long acted as a ‘safety valve’ in the Arab world, allowing the youth to address their crippling issues and social taboos without fearing arrests and censorship. The State carefully controls what is said and written, but falls short of censorship: instead cultural productions are in many ways encouraged, and sometimes funded by the ministry of culture, offering an opportunity to keep young artists, filmmakers and theatre companies under control while giving out the message that those countries respect their citizens’ freedom of expression. Wedeen writes, referring to Syria: “permitted theatrical and cinematic parodies offer one window into a political reality that is both structured by and critical of the official order” (Wedeen, 1999: 107). On the other hand, the Arab Spring has received a huge amount of media coverage in the West and a renewed interest for the region’s young artists, putting them under increased pressure to provide commentaries and fit within ‘Arab Spring’-themed exhibitions, as argues Kholeif (2012). It is to be said however that the cultural productions of North Africans and their engagement with society and politics largely predates and goes beyond the recent uprisings. The present essay proposes to look at different aspects of this engagement, from the need to relay a sense of frustration and the will to document and take part in the political renewal. I also want to insist on the differences between the three countries I will focus on here: Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. Although the media coined a singular name for the revolts, the “Arab Spring”, it is clear that the social and political situations in each country are very different, although similar issues such as youth alienation and the inability to express a political voice through ‘accepted’ mediums such as elections are recurrent throughout the region. 3 Echoing North Africans’ disillusionment and frustration on stage Several plays came out a mere months before the start of the Arab Spring and already predicted the end of oppressive regimes, presenting angry, desperate populations and out of touch leaders. Amnesia by popular Tunisian theatre makers Fadhel Jaibi and Jalila Baccar is fascinating because of its prophetic value: it charts the fall of fictitious minister Yahia Yaich, who learns about his destitution of TV. It is a play concerned with memory and identity, and it is set in a country eerily similar to Tunisia: it portrays an overpowering, corrupted elite who abuses its position and refuses to engage with the population, supported by a silenced press. Amine comments, “the connections between Yahia and the ousted president Ben Ali were quite evident” (Amine & Carlson, 2011: 214). Although the events unfolded much quicker that anyone could have predicted, with the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia followed by that of Mubarak in Egypt, and the descent of Libya, Syria and Yemen in deadly fights between the population and their leaders, Jaibi notes that the revolutions were “inexorable” (Paradou, 2011): the level of anger amongst the population was such that change was imminent. Furthermore, by voicing the disillusion of the masses, artists and theatre makers contributed to the fall of those regimes: they revealed a reality that was unbearable and untenable. Amnesia was surprisingly performed in Tunis for two months in 2010, a few months before the death of Bouazizi, and avoided censorship, unlike Jaibi’s previous play “Khamsoon”. It is interesting that the regime, probably censing the growing anger of the population, allowed the play to go on; Jaibi is under no illusion as to why his work was not censored this time around. He states that Amnesia was used by the government as an “alibi and shop window”i to show Tunisia in a favourable light, as a modern democracy respecting its citizens’ freedom of speech even when they are critical of the regime. The play takes its title from the capacities of those in power to erase and re-write history, in particular by controlling the media. The society of Yahia Yaich is thus one without past and without future: symbolically the library of the main character is burnt down, destroying compromising documents but also the intellectual and cultural heritage of the country. The play uses ten actors in addition to Yahia, all dressed in black dresses and suits, and who portray mechanical, mysterious characters. They surround the fallen politician, keeping an eye on him and controlling his movements. The play is highly surrealistic, with choreographed movements and 4 recorded texts telling the descent of Yahia Yaich into a form of madness. It thus makes a commentary on the oppressive atmosphere Ben Ali imposed on Tunisia, with his clique controlling the country’s economy and politics and forbidding the population to take initiative and to speak out, as exemplified by the tragic story of Bouazizi. Similarly, the play Huwa by Driss Ksikes in Morocco toured successfully around the country and in Europe and won the National Theatre festival’s Grand Prize in 2008 in Meknes, even though it is a hardly dissimulated diatribe against the King’s despotic rule. It tells the story of a group of people, called “Uterriens”, who are desperate to escape an autocratic ruler, referred to only as “Huwa”, (‘He’).
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